The Simpson Women’s Golf team started off its season in third place after its first meet at Buena Vista.

According to Coach Bob Darrah, this could use some improvement.

“We’re doing well, but not as well as expected,” Darrah said.  “We’ve got some room for improvement.”

Darrah’s goal for the team this year is to have better scores and fewer strokes by the end of the season. In comparison to last season’s scores he said this year’s are a little higher, and should improve once the team gets back into the swing of things.

“We will find out if we improve when we play at Wartburg this week,” Darrah said.

Wartburg is the team to beat this year and Simpson will find out how they measure up after they play them this week.

“Wartburg’s team is the conference favorite this year,” Darrah said.  “Simpson, Central and Luther are battling for second place behind Wartburg.”

Senior golfer Chelsy Manny is in agreement with Darrah that Wartburg is on top this year, but hopes Simpson can beat them.

“That has always been my goal since I started as a freshman: To beat Wartburg at a tournament, especially a conference tournament,” Manny said.

Manny also thinks that the team’s goal this year will be to continually improve throughout the season.

“I think any team’s goal is to shoot your first tournament and hopefully every time you can shoot five better or 10 better as a team,” Manny said.  “I know my individual goal is to get better as the season progresses.”

The team’s biggest goal for the season is to make it to nationals.

“We haven’t as a team been as good as Simpson has been in the past,” Manny said. “Hopefully, we can all shoot well at the same time and potentially be first in the conference and make it to nationals, which is our ultimate team goal.”

Freshman Stacy Bergeson received seventh place overall in the meet at Buena Vista and had the best score out of all the Simpson golfers.  Bergeson said she thinks the team will do well this year.

“I think we are going to do pretty well this season because we just had our first meet last week and not all of us performed at our top quality, and we got third by not all that much,” Bergeson said.  “This year should be a pretty bright year for us.”

Bergeson contributes how well she thinks the team will do this year to senior leadership.

“We have a pretty good team put together,” Bergeson said. “There is some really good senior leadership.  Chelsy Manny and Kayla Miller are really good senior leaders and are a really good base to have.”

The team has one more meet at Loras before the conference championships start. The team will travel to Cedar Falls for the first round of the tournament on October 1-2 and will play in Waverly for the second round on the following weekend.